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TU Delft scientists provide insight into the limitations of super-resolution microscopy and offer a new calculation method to determine maximum resolution. The technology is important for studying processes in the living cell, discovering the origin of diseases and developing new medicines. In addition, their publication nuances major precision improvements previously claimed by fellow researchers. Their findings were published in Biophysical Journal.

The ministry of Education, Culture and Science has awarded a Zwaartekracht funding of 20.8 million euro to the IMAGINE! consortium, of which TU Delft researchers Elizabeth Carroll, Sjoerd Stallinga (both ImPhys) and Carlas Smith (3ME) are a part of.

One of the big societal challenges today, is that the chemical industry still consumes a considerable amount of energy and resources. “This is a global issue for most, if not all, chemicals that factories produce nowadays”, says researcher Frank Hollmann. He has received a 2.5 M€ ERC Advanced Grant from the European Union to help tackle this problem over the next five years, by engineering enzymes as a catalyst for chemical reactions.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded a Veni grant to researcher Robin de Kruijff of the Reactor Institute Delft (RID) for her research on a new type of radionuclide generator which, among other things, can obviate the global bottleneck in cancer research. The new generator will, moreover, be the first recyclable one of its kind. “I hope that my new type of generator will ultimately make diagnostic treatments much more accessible and less dependent on a handful of reactors”, says De Kruijff.

A of researchers from TU Delft , led by dr. Farbod Alijani, have managed to capture low-level noise of a single bacterium using graphene. Now, their research is published in Nature Nanotechnology.

Jochem Vink (Bionanoscience) has received a Rubicon grant from NWO, which enables him to gain research experience at a leading institute abroad. His research will be about useful fungi attracting pathogens. He was awarded the coveted grant along with 21 other researchers who recently received their PhDs.

Metastasis of tumors is regarded as the largest contributor to cancer-related deaths, but physiologically relevant tumor models for cancer cell metastasis research are still lacking. Two-dimensional (2D) monolayer cell culture (on a flat surface) is traditionally used as in vitro model to investigate tumor behavior, migration, and invasion. Unfortunately, this (2-D) monolayer culture does not replicate the complexity of tumor and extracellular microenvironment where invasive cancer cells reside in tumor tissues. Therefore, 3D multicellular systems formed by cancer cells are gaining importance in the field of cancer cell invasion research.

Metastases in cancer are often caused by a few abnormal cells. These behave more aggressively than the other cancer cells in a tumour. Miao-Ping Chien and Daan Brinks are working together, from two different universities, on a method to detect these cells. Their research has now been published in Nature.

Researchers from the TU Delft have come up with a physical-based model that establishes a quantitative framework on how gene-editing with CRISPR-Cas9 works, and allows them to predict where, with what probability, and why targeting errors (off-targets) occur. This research, which has been published in Nature Communications, gives us a first detailed physical understanding of the mechanism behind the most important gene editing platform of today.

An essential aspect of the cells in our body is their ability to move, to repair certain tissues or chase intruders, for example: but how do they do it? Scientists from TU Delft, AMOLF and Utrecht University reveal how glue-like proteins called crosslinkers could not only help to hold the whole cell together passively, but surprisingly cause the cell to move as well. The research is now published in PNAS.